


Pennsylvania Petite

by ozerokrugloye



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Eating Disorders, F/F, F/M, Gen, Mental Health Issues, descriptions of violence (nothing more serious than normal canon), sexual assault mention (case-related), violence mentions (case-related)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-01 18:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4029799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozerokrugloye/pseuds/ozerokrugloye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JJ's teenage struggles with anorexia return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever CM fic... This first chapter is short, but I can't decide if it's too case-heavy. Later chapters will be much more personal to JJ and her struggles, this first one is just to sort of lay the ground work for the rest of the story. 
> 
> WARNING: POTENTIALLY VERY TRIGGERING W/R/T EATING DISORDERS.

JJ sunk down into the cool leather couch, heart pounding, sweat dripping from her face. She panted until her breath returned to a steady pace, and got up to look at the treadmill. She walked over and her head swirled. “ _Mind over matter, JJ, you can’t let physical limitations hold you back._ ” 756 calories burned, but that was not enough for her. She could do better. She could push harder, if she just had the self-control.

She slinked her way up the staircase and into the bathroom and turned the knob in the shower all the way to the left. While she waited for the water to heat up, she peeled off the sweat-dampened athletic tank and running shorts, then her sports bra and underwear. She took a deep breath in and held it. She stared into the mirror as she moved her fingers back and forth between her protruding ribs, exhaling slowly. She slowly slid her hand down her abdomen, ever so lightly caressing her stomach, and moved down to her hips, pinching them, feeling the hard bone beneath the sharp lines.

A knock on the door, then Will’s voice. “Sweetheart? Are you ready yet? It’s already 7:45.” Shit. Lost track of time. She jumped in the shower and quickly washed herself, jumped right back out, and got dressed. _How am I supposed to chase down unsubs wearing a pencil skirt?!_ Sometimes making an effort to look nice meant sacrificing functionality, especially in the field, but at least this way maybe she could get out of the more strenuous parts of her job. “ _God knows the last thing you need is to pass out in the middle of a chase..._ ”

She all but sprinted down the stairs and bounced straight over to her bag. “No breakfast?” Will asked innocently.

“No, I don’t have the time. I’ll pick something up on my way if I can,” JJ nonchalantly replied. She pecked him on the cheek. “Don’t forget that Henry has gymnastics right after school today. I wish I could be there to drop him off. I love you! Bye!”

And with that she was out the door.

 

****

JJ walked up to the door of the FBI building in Quantico, holding a cup of piping-hot coffee in each hand. She struggled to get them both balanced on her left arm to swipe herself in, when she heard a familiar voice.

“You got me coffee? You shouldn’t have!” Morgan said, swiping his own ID and holding the door open for her. He grabbed one of the cups and took a sip. “Eugh! Since when do you drink your coffee black?!” he questioned, handing it back with one eyebrow cocked up.

“I don’t… I just… haven’t gotten a chance to add anything to it yet.” she replied, clearly uncomfortable. Trying to change the subject, she added “Do you know where this case is? I saw that Garcia texted us but I was in such a rush this morning, I really only read the first line.”

“Manchester, New Hampshire. Not the most happening place, but I’ll take it over going to New York or L.A. for the fifth time this year.”

“I hear ya.” She chuckled lightly and took a sip of coffee.

They walked through the glass doors and into the bullpen. Standing in the doorway of the roundtable room were Hotch and Garcia. When the latter saw Morgan and JJ walk in, she gave them and excited wave and flashed them a big smile in her typical energetic fashion.

“Come over here, my lovelies! We’re just about to start!” she turned on her six-inch, lemon yellow heels and marched back into the roundtable room. The two agents followed. The rest of the team was already seated, casually conversing. JJ and Morgan took their seats and wished everyone a good morning.

Garcia grabbed her controller and strolled up to the monitor. “Alright, kids! Let’s get started!” She turned to the screen and clicked. Five men’s photos popped up, one after the other. “Two years ago, in Manchester, New Hampshire, law enforcement started to notice that every few months, a man would turn up showing evidence sexual torture and genital mutilation.” She diverted her eyes and clicked again. Crime scene photos. Pale, stiff corpses. A bullet hole in the forehead, and what looked like an explosion between their legs.

“Now a few murder victims wouldn’t be that special, but Manchester’s population is only just over 100,000 and the violent crime rate is pretty low, so when such a distinct M.O. presents itself, you tend to notice. Okay, so it sounds like a straight-forward case, you might say? Well you would be WRONG. Eight months ago, the killings stopped. I’m talking cold turkey. I already searched for victims in other states with a matching M.O., just to see if the perp had set up shop somewhere else, and I came up with nothing.”

“If the killings stopped, why are we involved? The unsub may have simply died.” Rossi said blankly.

“Patience, my love.” Garcia shot back. “Two weeks ago, the killings started up again, only now they’re not happening every two to three months. They’re happening every two to three days.” With another click, four more men’s pictures appeared on the screen. “The body count is now up to nine.”

“It looks like we've got some work to do,” said Hotch. “Wheels up in thirty...”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is longer than my first one. I think it turned out okay... I tagged this as JJ/Emily even though their relationship won't show up for a couple of chapters, but fear not, it is indeed coming. Feedback welcome and appreciated. :)

_“Valedictorian, soccer scholarship, corn fed but still a size zero…”_

Every memory JJ had of high school was blanketed in a thick layer of fog. She tried to do everything perfectly, she tried to make everyone happy. MVP, best in class, president of a handful of clubs. She was a textbook perfectionist going all the way back to grade school. And it was never, ever good enough, not for anyone else, but for her. She pushed herself harder than anyone else ever could. She was her toughest critic, and the most unsatisfied. No matter how well she did, there was always that little voice in the back of her head, whispering, torturing: _You can do better._  She threw everything she had at whatever she did, but that dedication, that drive to never settle for less than the best, ended up biting her right in the ass. The endless hours of homework and the effort she poured into soccer practice every day would have been enough to exhaust any typical teenage girl, but not JJ. That is, until she discovered what would become her most energy-consuming extracurricular activity.

She could never place a finger on the exact moment she started to go down that path. Maybe it was when she went swimsuit shopping for her family vacation to the Bahamas, or maybe it was when she got her first D on an algebra test. They both made her feel like a failure. _You’ve got to do better than this, JJ._ So she put in more hours studying. She cut sweets out of her diet. Everything started to look up after a while, but then that little voice started whispering. _You can do better._

When that first five pounds melted away, she felt like flying. _If this feels good, imagine what the next five will be like…_

So then she set calorie limits. Started skipping lunch. Ran extra laps at practice. In no time, she hit her next goal. Not just that, she felt fantastic. The secrecy of it all, the twisted feeling of success, the whole thing was exhilarating. The random bursts of energy she’d get through the day when she thought, “ _Think of how much you’re losing_ ” kept her going.

She would lock herself in her room, hiding from the food in the fridge, and studystudystudy. Sure, sometimes she had to read a single paragraph three times over to understand what it meant, but her grades just kept going up. Her extra effort on the soccer field caused her game performance to improve dramatically. She even caught the attention of college scouts. _This diet is the best thing that’s ever happened to me..._

“...JJ? JJ!” Reid yanked her from her daydream, waving his hand in front of her face. “We’re about to start talking about the case.”

“Oh, right, sorry,” she said. She uncrossed her legs, got up, and shuffled over to the rest of the team.

“I asked Garcia to perform a more thorough background check on all the victims,” Hotch began the brainstorming session. “As it turns out, they have all been arrested for violent rape of children no older than 9, but their records had been sealed or the charges were dropped, some under mysterious circumstances.”

“Could we be looking at a vigilante?” Reid asked.

“I think so, though I would hesitate to set anything in stone just yet,” Hotch replied. “The unsub also left a note. I had Manchester PD send us a copy, but we can examine the original when we get there.” He passed around the scan of a letter crudely scrawled onto a sheet of notebook paper.

_“They ruined the lives of countless innocent children, but instead you’re hunting me. Justice means nothing to you. You only care about protecting these disgusting animals. I’ll only stop when they’re all dead, or I’m dead.”_

“Who the hell is this guy?” Morgan said.

“I don’t think it’s a guy at all,” Blake picked up the letter and quickly scanned it with her eyes again. “The message has an intense passion to it. And look at these sentences. Long, descriptive, complex structures, the use of adjectives… This unsub is probably a woman.”

“That’s an excellent point,” Rossi said, nodding to his old-time co worker. “But what happened to her to make her start killing? These offenders only went after children. She obviously has to be an adult, maybe mid-30s at the oldest. The most obvious answer is that she identified with the victims of these men in some way, implying that she was a victim of child sexual assault as well, but given her age, she’s years removed from the trauma. So, what triggered this violent outbreak after all this time? And why now?”

“Most likely, something happened in her personal life to catalyze this kind of behavior. Maybe she saw her pain reflected in someone close to her, maybe it reminded her of what happened to her...” JJ trailed off.

“I’ll ask Garcia to dig,” Hotch said in his usual firm tone.

They all closed their files and dispersed to their previous places. JJ stood up a little too fast. Her brain swam above her as she clutched the armrest of the jet seat. Once it had sunk back down into her head, she took a quick glance around the cabin. She saw Morgan slide his headphones back on. Rossi flipped his book open to the page he had dog-eared. Reid and Blake were playing cards and giggling on the other side of the plane. Hotch was still shuffling papers around. _Okay, none of them noticed. That’s good._

She stood up straight, smoothed out her clothes, and walked (carefully) back over to her seat. When she sank down into the beige leather, her glycogen-deprived leg muscles thanked her. She exhaled deeply before she reached into her go-bag and pulled out her phone.

New message from Will.

“Hey there, hot stuff. Just wanted to let you know that everything went perfectly this morning. Henry says he misses you already. So do I. We love you!”

The corner of JJ’s mouth immediately lifted up in a half-grin/smirk. She looked out the window and took in the sight of the expanses of farmland beneath the wispy clouds outside. They must be flying over Pennsylvania now. The good ole Keystone State, where it all started for meek little JJ.

She was pulled from another long trip down memory lane when she heard the snapping and ruffling of a chips bag opening, and then she stiffened when that smell permeated the closed compartment of the jet.

“JJ, want some? It’s your favorite,” Reid taunted as he waved the Cheetos bag around from the other side of the cabin. Oh no.

She had been in this position way too many times before. She would tell herself not to eat anything that didn’t adhere to strict nutritional criteria (no more than 30% fat, no more than 125 grams of carbohydrates in a 24 hour period, etc. etc. etc.), only to go about her day and navigate a minefield of temptation. She would ultimately give in, because she was weak weak weak, weak of willpower, and weak of character. It would start with one bite of brownie, or a single-serving bag of her favorite guilty pleasure -- Cheetos Puffs -- which would turn into two more helpings, which would turn into plates and plates of pasta, which would turn into a whole package of Oreos, which would turn into… well… anything her hands could shovel down her throat fast enough. And just like that, the smallest mistake would snowball into a total binge.

“I’d love to, Spence, but my stomach has been really upset this morning. I think I’m starting to come down with something.” JJ said, placing a hand gingerly over her belly button and lightly grimacing.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she snapped back. Reid raised his eyebrows. Too harsh, oops. “Thanks anyway, though,” JJ gave a genuine smile, hoping to signal a nonverbal “no harm.” Reid smiled back and returned to his card game.

JJ slumped into her seat and looked out the window again. She imagined the clouds into shapes to distract herself from the gnawing sensation at the bottom of her stomach as she waited for the jet to touch down in New Hampshire.


End file.
